Minneapolis shooting scrambles Second Amendment politics for Trump

Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration's characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a firearm.

The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Donald Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trump's coalition called for a thorough investigation of Pretti's death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans' Second Amendment stances.

If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trump's top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.

"The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Leavitt qualified that "when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you."

Videos contradict administration story

That still marked a retreat from the administration's previous messages about Pretti's killing. It came the same day the president dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who was in charge in Minneapolis.

Within hours of Pretti's death on Saturday, Bovino said Pretti "wanted to … massacre law enforcement," and Noem said Pretti was "brandishing" a weapon and acted "violently" toward officers.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump's mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti "an assassin."

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Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who a federal officer pepper sprayed.

Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed, too, and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon — which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Pretti's gun and walked away with it just before shots began.

As videos went viral online and on television, Vice President JD Vance reposted Miller's assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of "the gunman's gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!)."

Gun rights advocates

The National Rifle Association, which has backed Trump three times, released a statement that began by casting blame on Minnesota Democrats it accused of stoking protests.

But the group lashed out after a federal prosecutor in California said on social media that, "If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you."

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That analysis, the NRA said, is "dangerous and wrong."

FBI Director Kash Patel magnified the blowback Sunday on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo." No one, Patel said, can "bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple."

Erich Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was incredulous.

"I have attended protest rallies while armed, and no one got injured," he said on CNN.

Conservative officials around the country made the same connection between the First and Second amendments.

"Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American," state Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the GOP caucus in Tennessee, said on social media.

Trump's first-term vice president, Mike Pence, called for "full and transparent investigation of this officer involved shooting."

Different response

Liberals, conservatives and nonpartisan experts noted how the administration's response differed from past conservative positions involving protests and weapons.

Multiple Trump supporters were found to have weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump issued blanket pardons to all of them.

Republicans were critical in 2020 when Mark and Patricia McCloskey had to pay fines after pointing guns at protesters who marched through their St. Louis neighborhood after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. Then there's Kyle Rittenhouse, a counter-protester acquitted after shooting and killing two men and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the post-Floyd protests.

"You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he was made a hero on the right," said Trey Gowdy, a Republican former congressman and attorney for Trump during one of his first-term impeachments. "Alex Pretti's firearm was being lawfully carried. … He never brandished it."

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has studied the history of the gun debate, said the fallout "shows how tribal we've become." Republicans spent years talking about the Second Amendment as a means to fight government tyranny, he said.

"The moment someone who's thought to be from the left, they abandon that principled stance," Winkler said.

Meanwhile, Democrats who have criticized open and concealed carry laws for years, Winkler added, are not amplifying that position after Pretti's death.

Killing in Minnesota intensifies protests